Currently, a color facsimile apparatus intended for general consumers has already been commercialized. However, this color facsimile apparatus intended for general consumers do not have a batch transmission function. The batch transmission function transmits separate pieces of information to the same destination by a single call, hereinafter sometimes referred to as one call origination.
Consider a case in which a company A is to transmit facsimile data to a company B. Nowadays, a facsimile apparatus is an indispensable unit for sending a copy of a document. The number of transmissions per day is very large. Once in a while, several employees in company A may simultaneously transmit facsimile data to company B. In this case, according to a conventional method, every time a facsimile original is sent, a call must be originated to the company B. That is, a series of operations, e.g., call origination, device handshaking, and disconnection, is repeated in proportion to the number of originals to be sent, thus wasting time and incurring unnecessary telephone expense.
If a plurality of originals in a send queue has the same destination in a facsimile apparatus, the above processing time can be shortened by sending these originals by one call origination. In order to do so, solving such a problem, a batch transmission function is very effective.
In such a facsimile apparatus equipped with a batch transmission function, pieces of information having the same destination are batch-transmitted by a single call regardless of the type of information involved.
Consider a case in which a batch transmission function is provided for a color facsimile apparatus. The color facsimile apparatus can transmit not only color information but also monochrome information as in the prior art. If, therefore, this batch transmission function is in effect and there are pieces of color information as well as monochrome information having the same destination, then both pieces of information are transmitted by one call connection regardless of whether they are color or monochrome data.
The facsimile apparatus on the receiving side receives pieces of information encoded by different image encoding schemes in one receiving operation. This may cause confusion in decoding processing. For example, one part of the information received in one receiving operation may be multilevel information encoded by JPEG encoding, while another part may be binary information encoded by MH encoding, MR encoding, MMR encoding, or JBIG encoding.